


The Eye of the Storm

by all_soul



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bisexual Pepper Potts, F/F, F/M, FF, Iron Man - Freeform, Iron Man 2, Natalie Rushman - Freeform, Natasha Romanoff - Freeform, Pepper Potts - Freeform, Pepperony - Freeform, Pining, Sexual Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, definitely not, honestly everyone is attracted to natasha romanoff, if you aren't i don't trust you, natasha romanov - Freeform, overdramatic storm metaphors, pepper potts is definitely not bisexual, peppernat, straight? Natasha romanoff, takes place during and after iron man 2, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:28:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21539779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_soul/pseuds/all_soul
Summary: Pepper Potts gets a new assistant. A very overqualified assistant that she is definitely not attracted to. Definitely.Warning for overdramatic storm metaphors
Relationships: Pepper Potts & Natasha Romanov, Pepper Potts & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Natasha Romanov, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Comments: 5
Kudos: 42





	The Eye of the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> I like metaphors and Pepper Potts doesn't get enough attention

Pt 1  
Tony Stark was a force of nature. One that Pepper Potts learned how to manage years ago. If she hadn’t she would not have survived this long. Tony Stark put Pepper Potts through scandals that would have knocked a lesser assistant clean over. For every time a sex tape dropped featuring someone it definitely should not, or a screencap of Tony flipping off a senator became social media’s poster child, Pepper was there calling back reporters. For every teenager who captioned “me” on all his photos and every one of those teenager’s parents assaulting him in the press, Pepper was there deleting comments. Tony Stark was a P.R. disaster, but that was the worst of him. For all his recklessness, Tony Stark was a firework, a flash of lightning. Frightening, garish, and capable of targeted, but brief damage. There was the rare case in which a shocked tree ignited, but wildfires like those she could handle.

The defining feature of Tony’s storm was that it was obvious, foreseeable from miles away. He was the storm that sailors could sniff on a breeze and hung in the air. He caused his own problems. Every move made him a new enemy. Tony’s problems were so frequent and so quick to die because they were inevitable. As soon as one began the next was inches away (although, to his credit, ever since Stark Industries started holding itself accountable they’d spread out). Now there were different problems to deal with. Tony was a walking controversy, and that made him predictable.

Natalie Rushman, however, was foreboding. She made Pepper’s skin crawl. From the moment she’d flipped Iron Man’s personal bodyguard head-over-heels without breaking that perfect stillness, Pepper was suspicious. If the audacious photos sent in as Natalie’s “resume” weren’t enough to irk her, this certainly was. Because, naturally, a physically flawless woman who spoke all too many languages and knew more about any professional field than would ever be necessary was also a master martial artist. Exactly three minutes was all Pepper needed to lock on target.

“I want one.”

She wasn’t the only one with an eye for Natalie. The storm was brewing. Natalie was a lawsuit waiting to happen, not to mention all too comfortable with Tony. She was concerned about the lawsuit, definitely, only that. The easy calm with which Natalie handled Tony made Pepper feel loud. Compared with Natalie’s take-it-in-stride management style, Pepper was the eye of the storm: just as suspect as the storm itself. Sure she knew Tony, could mediate a temporary peace in the midst of tragedy, but Natalie was the lighthouse. Safe. Secure. She made sure the storm didn’t do any damage to start with. She had a job to do and got it done.

Pepper followed the pair of them with her eyes as Tony stumbled away from the crowd. Natalie - dressed in a precariously low-cut salmon-pink skirt-suit - followed him with a clipboard.

“You have a nine-thirty dinner,” said Natalie. 

“Perfect, I’ll be there at eleven.”

Even when Tony was far out of earshot, Pepper readied thirty different retorts, prepared to track him down and drag him to that meeting herself. He was so cocky. She definitely hated it. Definitely.

She opened her mouth-

Natalie marked it down.

Her jaw went slack.

Natalie didn’t even break stride. She fell behind Tony and whipped out a phone, already letting Tony’s client know his plan and exactly what time to arrive. Perfect.

Natalie accomodated him. Rather than trying and failing to get Tony where he needed to be, inevitably annoying his client when he was late (like Pepper would have done), Natalie talked to the client. Let Tony do his thing and helped the third party remain calm.

Storm, meet lighthouse.

It was then that Pepper decided that Natalie was annoyingly perfect. Not just suspiciously adept, not too good to be true, but perfect. She was just as good as she said she was. And it irritated Pepper to no end. Natalie was Tony’s perfect antithesis. She balanced him, caught his errors and soothed them without his notice. She managed him by not managing him. And she learned to do it flawlessly in less than a week.

Pepper hated that she hated Natalie. More like she hated that she didn’t hate Natalie, she thought, glancing up over her laptop at Natalie on the phone. She sat effortlessly poised, back straight, a curl of hair draped elegantly over her shoulder. She may as well have modeled in Tokyo, Pepper thought, blocking out the image that popped into her head. The image that Tony had shown her that she wanted to forget more than most things: the one of Natalie wearing nothing but a set of lacy lingerie propped up on a pink feather pillow. She brushed it away, along with a threatening blush.

Whenever she looked at Natalie she went through the same checklist of questions to avoid the image: Is she doing her work? Does she know what she’s doing? Does she know that I’m staring at her? And the answers were always the same: Flawlessly. Of course she does. Most likely. And she’d stop looking at Natalie. What was there to see anyway? She was always doing the same thing, Pepper noticed, watching her hang up the phone. Like clockwork, she immediately picked up another call. How many more people could Tony possibly have to deal with since last week?

Eavesdropping would be the worst kind of invasion. She felt like a reporter. God, how many had used the same dirty trick on her?

“Of course,” said Natalie. She scrolled through something on her laptop Pepper couldn’t see. She propped her phone between her ear and shoulder, typing a ridiculous number of words at once as she listened. “He could be a candidate. Pans could pose a problem.” Natalie’s eyes flicked to hers for a fraction of a second. Pepper looked down.

Pans? She’d heard some stupid pseudonyms in her life, but that was up there. The cadent a sounded wrong in Natalie’s husky voice.

Pepper’s heart leapt at the idea. Something was wrong with Natalie. But that wasn’t all - there was also a crinkle between her eyebrows when she focused. Pepper knew from years of Tony poking fun of it that she had one too. Even over the phone, Natalie’s voice was melodic, as if simply immune to the bounds of technology, and her hair never seemed to frizz in Malibu’s humidity. And yet she had a focus crinkle!

Somehow it made her even more beautiful, curse her. God that made it so much worse. Natalie was human. That meant she’d taken the time to learn everything she knew. She could take down Tony’s head of security in boxing, knew the business world like the workings of a clock, and spoke Italian, French, Russian, Latin, and other languages Pepper couldn’t even keep straight. It made her feel uncomfortably outmatched. She shifted in her chair, glancing up at Natalie. Natalie was still looking at her.

“Miss Potts?” she asked, both eyebrows politely quirked. The wrinkle was gone.

Pepper cursed herself.

“Oh it’s nothing, Natalie,” she said, shaking her head.

Natalie waited, the tilt of her head unchanged.

“Just a little breakthrough.”

Natalie turned away. Though she didn’t show it, Pepper knew she was unconvinced. Not for the first time she wondered how her new recruit was so good at hiding her feelings. And how was it that she was so good at reading people? Pepper was quite good at it too if she said so herself, but Natalie knew people like books. She could practically see her thumbing through pages, fact-checking Pepper’s smile paired with her words. Mercifully, she didn’t push it.

If Natalie flipped through pages with ease, dealing with reporters definitely felt like paper cuts. They pushed together like a herd of animals, or birds, more accurately, seeing how they cawed and screeched, and pushed each other aside.

“Miss Potts!” called the one closest to her - an over-eager young man, clearly shocked at having gotten so close. It wasn’t like she was on her highest defense, having been picking up lunch when a gaggle of reporters swamped her on the way to the car.

“Miss Potts, what’re your thoughts on Tony Stark’s racing stunt this Monday?” he shouted, sliding between her and the car door. Irritation flared in her chest.

“I am not on the record right now, now if you’ll kindly leave me alo-” she began,

“He’s vanished! Is he working on another big project, to fight that maniac from the track?” The reporter shoved a recorder in her face, causing her to step back. She batted it away, taking another decided step to his left. This was perhaps her least favorite part of the job - reporters left something to be desired in their approach. That is, human dignity or any consideration for personal space.

“I told you, I am off the record! Now will you-”

Before she could so much as finish, another reporter - a ginger-haired woman with yet another recorder - blocked her path.

“Roxie Usher, Forbes magazine-” she rattled off several more qualifications that Pepper could hardly digest, “-how is Stark Industries handling their figure-head’s erratic behavior?”

“Miss Usher, I am out to lunch, I am not-”

“Lucas Malloy, Global,” said yet another reporter, reaching yet another recording device over Forbes’ shoulder, “How-”

“Ms. Potts isn’t taking questions right now.” A smooth voice piped up at Pepper’s shoulder. Perfect timing. Another second and she might have said something she’d regret.

She glanced over and found Natalie, who she’d told to wait in the car, perfectly composed and staring down the reporters with that eerie calm. It was, quite frankly, terrifying. Her utter calm reminded Pepper of a doll out of a horror movie. Her red lip did not help. If it wasn’t one thing it was another.

“But-”

“She is off the record. We will file an injunction should you continue to harass her,” Natalie said. Something in her eyes made the crowd step back in perfect unison.

“But we-”

Natalie’s head tilted a degree to the left, and Mr. Malloy was the first to go. Horror movie doll, Pepper thought, fighting the urge to take a step back herself. Usher followed, and soon enough the entire cluster of reporters dispersed. Pepper breathed out a sigh of relief, finally facing her assistant.

“How did you do that?” she asked, astonished.

Natalie shrugged. “You’re not the first high profile I’ve worked for,” she replied, frustratingly vaguely.

They got in the car. For a while she watched out the window as the blur of skyscrapers melted into desert, admiring the California skyline for the millionth time. Nothing was constant here, the streets a smattering of old stone and shining glass. Change was part of the buzz, tangible in the air and humming with the cable car tracks. Pepper never got tired of watching California move. Had her heart (and her work) not belonged to New York she’d consider moving here full time.

Now though, Pepper couldn’t enjoy it. She always felt safe driving through cared-for California streets, and it wasn’t the outside that perturbed her now. She tapped her fingers on the center divider. Her gaze travelled to Natalie for a quick moment, but Natalie’s eyes in the rearview mirror caught her.

“Thank you,” she said, breaking the silence. “For what you did back there.”

For a fraction of a second she could’ve sworn she saw a smile.

“It’s no problem, Miss Potts.” Natalie adjusted her grip on the steering wheel, glancing back at Pepper in the mirror.

She knew better than to ask. Over the past week she couldn’t hazard a single guess as to where her assistant learned any of those skills. It obviously wasn’t from whatever prestigious college she had definitely attended. Natalie herself hadn’t told her anything at all, Pepper realized.

“Where are you from, Natalie, if you don’t mind me asking?” Pepper said, testing the waters. Natalie didn’t flinch as she replied.

“New York, just outside the big city. Lived in Boston for a while but wasn’t long for it.”

Not enough high-profile work in one of America’s largest business hubs then. New York seemed a rather dramatic city to have raised such a sedated woman. Boston would’ve fit her perfectly. Elegant, professional, and bubbling with business. It being the only inconsistency in Natalie’s story, Pepper couldn’t help it, her curiosity was piqued.

“And where did you go to college?”

Naturally she replied with a very prestigious school. Of course she’d been reading into it. Not everyone in the world had a great secret. A rush of guilt accompanied the reminder, and despite Natalie’s lack of (expressed) discomfort, she felt like she was interrogating the clearly reserved woman. Again, she felt loud. She fell silent for the rest of the car ride.

Possibly the worst thing about Natalie Rushman was that she was stunning. Obvious to anyone with eyeballs and half a brain cell, perhaps, but to Pepper, beauty was not of the essence. Of course she noticed beauty. She could appreciate a fit figure and a sharp jaw. Anyone could occasionally swoon at a lovely pair of eyes and a rakish smile. In a man.

She was familiar with the feeling of frustration. The rise of heat in her cheeks and the light race of her heart that felt like a million fireworks and cold dread simultaneously. She faced it with Tony every day, insistently as she denied it. The press was easy to appease. Feed them what they wanted to know and they’d back off, but there was only so long she could lie to herself. She’d given up on hiding her feelings for Tony two… three years ago? and had since been far happier. Pepper had made peace with the fact that he would never notice, and turned to hoping that someone else would come along and erase those feelings.

Whatever this was was so much worse. This was both at once. Frustration and hiding. Combatting frustrations as well as her hectic new schedule and infinite complications that came with the hiring process, fending off reporters, and emerging supervillains might just be enough to break Pepper Potts. Throw in the fact that this Natalie Rushman was vying for Tony’s attention and Pepper had herself a good old-fashioned mental breakdown. To add yet another thing, Natalie Rushman was a woman. A female person who happened to be possibly the most beautiful human being Pepper had ever laid eyes on. Not to mention she was smart, quick, truly incredible with the press, and had fascinating eyes to rival Tony’s.

Pepper was quickly inching out of the eye of the storm. She fiercened Tony’s wind and rain, and, thrown out of balance, the storm thrashed out of control. A storm could not function without its center. What was it called… The Copperfield effect? Cauliflower? Coriolis, it was the Coriolis Effect: a pattern of wind resistance that turned any air current in the northern hemisphere clockwise. This phenomena was the reason why storms always had an eye, the wind spinning permanently around it like magnetism. To break the eye would be to ruin the storm’s rotation, and destroy it all together.  
Pepper could not afford to spin out of control, but what to do when logic doesn’t win? It was futile as trying to catch the wind in a net.

If there was another disaster, Pepper would explode. She would sizzle like a spark travelling up a bomb’s string until- boom! So, naturally, Tony had to have a birthday party. Small gathering, he said. Just some fun, he said. She supposed for him, half of Malibu was a small party. Filled with enough alcohol to serve all of Malibu, and enough scantily clad women to fill a cruise ship. Oh God what if he tries putting them on a cruise ship. She had half a mind to call and make sure no one rented one to him.

As she made her way through the party, deafening music rattled her bones and muddled her head. These stairs were hard enough to navigate in heels without drunk women blocking the path and shards of glass from smashed windows providing yet another obstacle.

A woman standing by the top of the stairs watched her, using a mostly-empty bottle to better push her breasts up. Like they needed it. Pepper averted her eyes as she started toward the stairs, but the woman sauntered right into her path.

“Ooh, it’s Miss Potts,” she crooned.

Pepper kept walking, eyes on the floor, but the woman stepped in front of her, nearly toppling in her impossible platforms.

“Going so soon?” she giggled. She looked Pepper up and down, eyes lingering far below Pepper’s eyes. This had to be a curse. The universe was telling Pepper that whatever she was feeling was… noticeable. She shuddered.

The woman’s perfume combined with the alcohol on her breath was dizzyingly strong, and Pepper’s head was already starting to hurt when she caught a glimpse of dark hair and a glowing repulsor. If the feeling of relief and dread that accompanied his every appearance was going to be an everyday thing, Pepper’s heart would give out within the week.

“Sorry to disappoint,” she murmured, side-stepping the woman and continuing down the stairs. Her chagrined calls beckoning Pepper back echoed down the stairs, and she prayed Tony couldn’t hear.

He didn’t.

“Fire in the hole!” came Tony’s voice. His dreaded I’m-trying-to-impress-a-girl voice that made Pepper’s skin crawl. What was worse was exactly who the girl was he was trying to impress. The one pressed to Tony’s front. The one who had Tony’s hand on her waist and one of his gauntlets on her arm.

The repulsor went off, shattering an expensive glass figurine with a crash that sent everyone in the vicinity back a few feet. A crash that mingled with giggles. An unprofessional reply she never wanted to hear from Natalie Rushman.

“You got it.”

“Oh gosh! Packs a big punch doesn’t it,” said Natalie breathlessly, her hand finding Tony’s waist.

Something acidic rose in Pepper’s stomach. She turned away, gift box in hand. Clearly she wasn’t wanted here.

“Wait wait wait, Pep come on!”

There was the dread again. She slowly turned back around, hating how reminiscent she was of a startled animal. She acted like a deer in headlights around him and Natalie. Out of place again. Loud.

“Hi!” said Tony, grinning and gesturing her forward with an open arm.

Natalie grinned right along with him, a genuine smile that made Pepper’s heart crack a little.

“Both my girls are here, this is great!” Tony said, and her heart cracked a bit more. How long had it taken her to earn that qualification? Versus Natalie’s… week? Four days?

“Happy birthday,” said Pepper, unable to muster a smile.

“God I’m so psyched that you came, I didn’t think you were gonna make it.” She might have appreciated it had it not sounded so drastically out of character for him.

“You’re psyched that I came, is that-” Pepper said, serious concern worming into the dismissal.

All the while Natalie followed the conversation, eyes drifting between herself and Tony, her smile faded. Listening.

“Happy birthday,” Pepper said again, handing Tony the box. Embarrassment flared in her stomach, and she immediately regretted it. In the moment she forgot his being-handed-things phobia. The embarrassment licked further up as he made a point of telling a smiling Natalie not to do so. 

Natalie watched both Tony and Pepper as he did, something else clinging to that piercing gaze.

Pepper didn’t like the something else in her eyes. Or how that something slid down Pepper’s neck and into the dip of her waist, over her hip and back again. Something settled low in Pepper’s stomach that was not embarrassment. She stared at the box in Tony’s hands without really seeing it. Until he was handing it to Natalie, who lifted her hand clad in the repulsor glove in response.

“I’m rather attached,” she said with a smirk. That was enough.

Pepper took the box back and left. If he didn’t want it he certainly didn’t need it. He and Natalie seemed perfectly content with each other anyway.

The eye of the storm was gone. Laws of nature and physics be damned, wind lashed away and sea spiralled up into the torment. Tony Stark and his C.E.O.-will-they-won’t-they girlfriend? were thrashing out of control. Pepper had officially too much on her plate, and it showed. Tony’s acts of depravity and inadequacy grew more and more public, and less and less controlled. A racetrack was hijacked by a maniac with whips and Tony’s car crashed onto the scene containing the will-they-won’t-they girlfriend? and his driver. He hosted a party for half of Malibu at his private estate, shot a few watermelons out of the air with his own personal congressional headache, and then an air force colonel flew one of those headaches right out of the building. The lighthouse had a lot on her hands. And there’s only so much a single light can do amidst a storm like this.

What was happening to her? After she thoroughly harangued Tony for his behavior and soothed every news outlet that she had on speed dial, Pepper was exhausted. And she very much did not want to see Natalie, who she grew more suspicious of by the hour. Suspicion. Yes. That was the infuriating pounding of her heart and roiling in her stomach. All the images of Natalie taking off her jacket to reveal strong arms and flawless curves were suspicion. Who knew what she hid in the pockets, after all, and why was she so strong? Happy was not a light man, and Natalie had just grabbed his fist and flipped him. Every time she caught herself thinking about Natalie’s thighs around Happy’s head she turned furiously red. Whatever this feeling was was off limits, and embarrassing. She was too old and too suspicious of Natalie to be having feelings like this.

But Natalie’s stupid intelligent, wandering eyes and husky voice were determined to undermine her.

When they arrived at the Stark Expo, ready for a thoroughly underwhelming performance by Hammer, they were on the same page for once; sporting identical impatience. Pepper couldn’t help but be proud. This was good. They would sit and judge Hammer together, and all would be well. Natalie had even tucked all her shining red curls into a bun, so if her blouse was still lower cut than was professional, at least one distraction was eliminated.

They found their seats close to the stage, between two businessmen. One, a balding man with a pot-belly and pig-like eyes, took a handkerchief and dabbed at his forehead, eyeing Natalie in a way that made Pepper’s skin crawl. He took her in like a spectacle, even licked his lips. His partner didn’t seem to notice, focused on his phone in his lap. Pepper shuddered. She was about to warn Natalie when the man yelped, and jumped in his seat. Natalie smiled innocently at Pepper, but judging by how the businessman held his foot she guessed that Natalie’s stiletto heel had found it. How she could have possibly known with her back turned Pepper had no idea, but Natalie’s emerging smirk confirmed so. Pepper gulped.

When robots took off from the stage and screams filled the air, Natalie looked far too calm. Pepper shot out of her seat, looking up toward the sky as shining red and gold lead dozens and dozens of clunky robots to the stars.

“Ms. Potts,” Natalie said, crashing Pepper back to earth. She locked eyes with Pepper, firm and sure.

All Pepper could do was follow as Natalie took off like a shot, fighting through the crowd and heading toward the stage, effortlessly dodging parents leading panicked children and businessmen yelling into phones. Somehow, Natalie’s hand found her wrist, keeping them together, her strong hold leading Pepper through. Screams tore through the air as glass shattered into the crowd and bots soared through the sky. Tony was hot on their tail. Or they were on his. Either way he was not answering his earpiece and Pepper was too busy running through the panicked crowd, trying to avoid being trampled by frantic parents and tech developers to watch.

When they finally broke through, they found the the stagedoor, mostly unguarded. Natalie threw it open.

The gaggle of technicians puzzling over the control panel looked up. Among them was Justin Hammer, looking just as confused. His mop of brown hair combined with his entitled, angry expression and glasses slipping down his nose reminded Pepper of a cartoon character. The image turned her stomach.

“He’s locked us out of the mainframe-” began one of the technicians.

“Who’s locked you out of the mainframe?!” Pepper demanded, storming up to the group of them.

“Go away, go away, I’ve got this handled,” said Hammer, waving his hands at her as if she were a child who needed dismissing.

“Have you now?!”

“Yes, I do! And if your guy hadn’t showed up this wouldn’t be happening, so please now, go away, thank you!”

Pepper was about to open her mouth to retort when Natalie stepped in front of her, took Hammer by the arm, twisted it behind his back, and expertly slammed him against the control panel; sending a shock through the room.

“Tell me who’s behind this, who’s behind this?!” she demanded, shoving him harder against the panel.

Hammer groaned. “Ivan, Ivan, Ivan, Ivan Vanko” he spat, pitiful under Natalie’s hold.

“Where is he?” Natalie hissed in his ear.

“He’s at my facility.”

And with that, Natalie let him go, turned, and left.

Who the hell was this woman? And why was Pepper, instead of gathering police and guards, wishing Natalie would slam her against a wall?

Shoving down the heat in her stomach, Pepper got on the phone and called the NYPD.

Hunched over the technician, the next time Pepper saw Natalie was over a camera. Somehow in the last fifteen minutes of commotion, Natalie had left the premises, broken into Hammer Industries, found the control computer, and hacked into the system. By the time Pepper joined hers and Tony’s call she had already cracked whatever hold Vanko had on the bots and was working on un-hacking them. And she had changed clothes. And Tony called her “Romanoff.” And was that a guard hanging behind her? Oh and Tony was dying and was planning on making her an omelette to tell her so. Pepper needed a vacation. Or retirement.

Mercifully, the NYPD arrived soon after. Pepper turned her focus to Hammer, who had been cooperating, if reluctantly. She took great pride in informing them that it was Hammer they were after, and even more pride in the look on his face.

“Ah, I see,” Hammer said ruefully, looking up at Pepper. “You’re trying to pin this on me. That’s good, that’s good. You’re starting to think like a CEO, taking out the competition. I like that-” 

With each word that came out of his mouth Pepper wanted more and more to punch him in the jaw. 

“You wanna make a problem for me I’ma make a problem for you, I’ma see you again real soon-” He kept muttering until he was out of earshot, maybe even longer.

Pepper knew how little time he’d actually spend in prison. She wasn’t fooling herself, businessmen like him were bailed out immediately, but for now, she couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief.

She finally let herself relax as she lead the remaining police out of the building, sending them off in different directions. She herself stood out on the stairs, looking over the ruined venue. Cans and glass littered the stone steps, the giant robots strewn around like dolls. The stone was stained with ash and spires of smoke rose from the bots’ thrusters. Pepper didn’t like sci-fi movies, but standing surrounded by fallen robots, having just shipped off a megalomaniac tech giant, and finding her assistant, her personal assistant, dressed straight out of a comic book having presumably taken out every guard in a high-security building, Pepper supposed she was living one.

Something was beeping. Many somethings. And a device planted on a bot at her feet was flashing red.

She squinted at it.

There was a distant woosh, and something heavy collided with her, lifting her off the ground and into the sky with a blast of cold air that knocked the wind out of her lungs. Pepper screamed, struggling against metal before realizing- Tony. She relaxed.

“Her name is Natasha Romanoff, actually,” said Tony, chugging the last of his smoothie. He set the glass down with a crash. His work station really never was free of metal detritus.

“Yes, and she thinks you’re unsuited to this “Avengers” project,” Pepper said, taking the glass. She pressed a kiss to his cheek and started toward the stairs. The broken glass had been cleaned up, but there was still a gaping hole where the wall once was. She stepped right over it and was about to head upstairs when-

“She doesn’t apologize for her work.” Tony called, halting her in her tracks. “Learned that the hard way,” he grumbled.

“I don’t hold anything against her,” Pepper said, leaning against the intact stone wall, the glass dangling from her fingers.

“Sure you don’t.”

“I don’t!”

Tony took a deep breath. “She doesn’t apologize for her work to me. She still has your phone number, you know-”

Right on que, Pepper’s phone rang. It was uncanny. Natalie Rushman calling, it read. It kind of made her cringe. Even the name was false.

“Hello?”

“Ms. Potts.” There was that voice again. She swore it defied the laws of technology.

She ignored Tony’s smirk, also right on que.

Pepper waved it away and started back up the stairs.

“Ms. Rushman, or Romanoff, I should say.”

“We need to follow up with you,” said Natalie- Natasha.

“About anything in particular? I didn’t think S.H.I.E.L.D. had anything to do with this whole Hammer-Vanko ordeal.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. has to do with everything, Ms. Potts.”

“So I see.”

“Does tomorrow afternoon work for you?”

“Does it matter if I say no?”

There was a pause.

“Not really.”

“You know Fury usually takes these himself,” said Agent Romanoff. She sat across from Pepper in a wide empty room. The only light came from the holo-screens set up around them, and the skyward windows, streaming perfectly onto the table between them, shining over her curly hair. Agent Romanoff was even more businesslike than Natalie - or at least S.H.I.E.L.D.-Agent Romanoff was. This woman had so many layers Pepper wondered if even she knew them all.

“Well then I feel very special,” said Pepper, offering a wry smile. “Where’s the case file? Tony said he got one with an unflattering report from you, and I assume I earned one just as bad.”

Romanoff just looked at her. “Ms. Potts, do you think S.H.I.E.L.D. dislikes you?”

“I think they dislike Tony,” said Pepper evenly. “I didn’t think I had any part in it- until now, at least.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. has never held anything against you, you know. Stark, maybe, but not you. A lot of us actually respect you,” said Romanoff. Her gaze was just as intense as Natalie’s. Less playful. Deeper. Her eyes never seemed to stay the same color either, which she noticed instead of listening.

“Sorry- respect me?” Pepper said with a frown. “What does this- how does this have to do with Tony? Or my… evaluation? What was this meeting about again?”

“Your evaluation,” Romanoff said, pushing a case file toward Pepper. “We respect you. That hasn’t changed. You behaved as best you could under the given circumstances.”

This was extraordinarily high praise from Agent Romanoff, she assumed, raising an eyebrow as she took the file. She opened it, leafing through the couple pages until she reached one that read: Agent Romanoff - Assessment of Virginia Pepper Potts.

“Stressed easily, startles quickly, but handles business with grace, and contends with Tony Stark as best she can, despite it not being her responsibility...” Pepper chuckled as she skimmed over the rest of the file. “It will always be my responsibility to look after him. It’s practically in my DNA.” She looked up at Romanoff, who studied her plainly. “But thank you. I’m sure that’s high praise in your line of work.”

“It is. And please don’t disclose anything you hear or read in here to any outside sources,” said Romanoff, holding her hand out for the file. 

Pepper's face heated. “I have one more question," she said, handing it back.

“Just one?”

“Pans?” Pepper asked, embarrassed. “I heard you on the phone, you said Tony could be a candidate and that “Pans” could pose a problem. I guess I know what he’s a candidate for now, but what’s “Pans?””

“Potts and pans,” Agent Romanoff said, her smirk changing into a smile, something almost… dorky? It eased her serious eyes and endeared Pepper even more to her. “It was your code name.”

Her codename. Pans. “Who knew S.H.I.E.L.D. was run by such dorks?” Pepper said, smiling to herself. She looked up at Romanoff - Natasha - and met those fascinating eyes.

“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about S.H.I.E.L.D., Ms. Potts. Although we doubt it’ll stay that way for long. Stark tells you a lot.”

“Yes he does. And I think we’re beyond formalities, Agent Romanoff. Call me Pepper.”

Natasha actually smiled at that. Warm. Her eyes downright glowed when she smiled like that. “Call me Natasha.”

“Alright, Natasha,” Pepper said, holding out her hand.

Natasha took it. “Good day, Ms. Potts,” She said, and stood, taking the case file with her.

“Natasha-”

But Natasha was already leaving, leaving only a trace of perfume, and clarity in the air.

So the lighthouse guards the storm. Guides others through it. Perhaps the eye is a part of the storm too. Another piece which must be set into balance, and which must also be kept in check if ships are to make their way through. As mortifying as it was, the lighthouse was saving people from the eye too. After Pepper spun out of control, Agent Romanoff controlled the situation from the outside. Guided people through Pepper’s scatterbrained-ness in addition to Tony’s erratic behavior. It was embarrassing to think that she was a problem too, but the matching case files made it obvious. Both Tony and Pepper had been under observation, and so Agent Romanoff had been sent to mitigate both of their crises. It seemed though, that there was another piece to this storm. A sailor watches the horizon, and knows when a storm is approaching. It is the sailor who warns the land of the incoming torrent, and it is the sailor who activates the lighthouse. The sailor was S.H.I.E.L.D., or, more accurately, Nick Fury. He saw this storm coming and activated his brightest lighthouse.

How ironic it was that the eye of the storm be drawn to the lighthouse. Because with it comes torment, and destruction to the surrounding area, but should the very eye meet the safety of the lighthouse, a peace might just be formed. A tunnel of wind to send Natasha Romanoff’s hair flying and wrap Pepper Potts up in her. But if the eye of the storm were to spend too much time on land, everything around it would be destroyed. As peaceful as the eye was, the storm would thrash and tear until nothing was left, and so the eye could not linger with the lighthouse. Should Pepper Potts’ thoughts linger with Natasha Romanoff, she could never truly be with Tony. How she’d waited for Tony. She could not give that up, and she didn’t want to. Pepper would always be attracted to Natasha, but the storm needs its eye. Pepper was the eye of the storm, and Tony Stark was her missing piece. Her rage, her crazy, what gave her purpose. Natasha’s lighthouse would always be there to balance them, but she was not meant for the storm, and the storm could not linger. The lighthouse was bolted down, but where so went the storm did the eye.

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: removed "noticed your priviness towards women"
> 
> Shocker! I'm writing a second part to this, and I might want to keep that little detail a secret... for now ;)


End file.
